{EOP}Tough Times for America’s Friends in Pakistan

Ahmed Quraishi

Interior Minister Rehman Malik tried to brazenly mislead members of the Senate of Pakistan on the American hired-gun Raymond Davis. Addressing the senators on Wednesday, 2 Feb., Mr. Malik told the house that the murderer working for the US Embassy in Islamabad ‘holds a diplomatic passport.’

Mr.Malik tried to confuse ‘diplomatic immunity’ with ‘diplomatic passport’. While the accused American was issued a diplomatic passport by the US government, the Pakistani government refused to recgonize him as such and only granted him a business visa.

Now the Zardari government and its key figures are trying to hoodwink the Pakistani nation by confusing diplomatic immunity, which the murderer doesn’t have, with a diplomatic passport that he carries without a Pakistani diplomatic visa.

The most ridiculous statement that Mr. Malik made in the Senate was this: “We have to live in this world and we have certain treaties with other countries.’

Basically the Zardari government is in big trouble. Mr. Malik is on record telling former US ambassador Anne Patterson that his government looks to Washington for support and protection. Mr. Zardari has told US officials he doesn’t mind if CIA increases drone attacks and kills innocent Pakistani civilians in the process because ‘collateral damage worries you Americans, not me.’

So this Pakistani government considers serving US interests its highest aim in life and the reason for its existence. Pakistani citizens shot in their backs by a military-trained officer who claims to be a diplomat and who concocted a story about armed robbery, all of this doesn’t matter to Mr. Malik and his government. What is more important in his view is for him to serve a foreign government with loyalty.

But the bad news for Mr. Malik is that this time Pakistanis have had it with US meddling in Pakistan and have had it with a rented Pakistani ruling elite serving foreign interests.

Independent Pakistani political activists and civil society members intend to keep the pressure on this government. The families and loved ones of the three murdered Pakistanis have also resisted all pressures by Mr. Malik’s men to bribe them with offers of a US Green Card and stacks of hundred-dollar US bills in exchange for pardoning the murderer.

But the real issue here is to stop the practice of allowing US covert agents into Pakistan that Mr. Malik’s government is deeply involved in at the expense of Pakistani interests.